Open Arms of Minnesota

Welcome to Open Arms
Open Arms of Minnesota prepares & delivers nourishing meals to critically ill Minnesotans and their families in need —100% free of charge to our clients.
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Fresh, Healthy, Delicious Meals
Our dietitians guide our trained chefs in developing a variety of tasty menu items tailored to specific illnesses.
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A Community of Love
Open Arms is powered by our incredible volunteers, who ensure our critically ill neighbors are always nourished with love.
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What We Offer

Medically Tailored Meals

Our registered dietitians guide our trained chefs in developing delicious, made-from-scratch meals tailored to specific illnesses.

Convenient Home Deliveries

With the help of our volunteer drivers, we deliver a week’s worth of meals at a time, allowing clients to focus on healing and spending more time with loved ones.

Nutrition
Support

Our Nutrition Team is always available for our clients. They provide each client a nutritional assessment and offer free nutrition counseling & education services.​

HEALTHY
Ingredients

We use fresh, local, and organic ingredients whenever possible—most of it prepared in-house and some of it grown ourselves at one of our five Open Farms locations.

Care for
Clients & FAmiLy

Meals are delivered not only to our clients, but also to dependents and caregivers. Income is not a qualifier for our services, and we operate on models of abundance, community, & social responsibility.

A Community of Kindness & Love

Everything we do relies on our incredible community of supporters and volunteers, who ensure that our meals are always prepared and delivered with love.

FY 2021 By The Numbers

3,757

clients, caregivers and dependents served with our nourishing meals

794k

medically tailored meals cooked and delivered to our clients

62k

hours of time donated by 6,600 volunteers, equaling ~30 employees

3,726

donors supported our neighbors living with life-threatening illnesses

To better serve our diverse community of clients, Open Arms created a Cultural Meals Program in 2022 to develop accessible, culturally appropriate meals to serve Hmong, Latinx, and East African clients who are disproportionately impacted by life-threatening illnesses and critical health issues. We recently hired three culinary consultants (one from each community) to provide culturally appropriate recipes that reflect their communities, educate staff about cultural meals and preparation, and conduct surveys, focus groups, and tasting events. We intend to roll out our cultural meals program over the next year. Stay tuned for more updates!
If you are looking for a reason to join the Open Arms delivery party, look no further! We're always looking for more volunteer delivery drivers to bring #medicallytailoredmeals to our neighbors with life threatening illnesses and critical health issues. Interested? Email nate@openarmsmn.org 
#volunteer #foodismedicine
VOLUNTEERS NEEDED: Help us package and deliver #medicallytailoredmeals for our neighbors with life threatening illnesses and make some new friends in the process! We have lots of open volunteer shifts this week at both of our kitchens. Use the link in our bio and select "Volunteer At Open Arms!" to learn more about our volunteer opportunities. 

Here's our biggest needs for the week:
Tuesday, March 21
• Bakery (MPLS) – 11am-1pm
• Meal Packaging (MPLS) – 2:30-4:30pm
• Meal Packaging (St. Paul) – 5-7pm
Wednesday, March 22
• Box Making for Shipping (St. Paul) - 9-11am
• Meal Packaging (St. Paul) 9-11am, 11:30am-1:30pm
Thursday, March 23
• Meal Packaging (St. Paul) – 7:30-9am, 11:30am-1:30pm, 5-7pm
• Meal Packaging (MPLS) –2:30-4:30pm, 5-7pm
• Client Meal Delivery (St. Paul) 11:30am-1:30pm
Friday, March 24
• Meal Packaging (St. Paul) - 7:30-9am, 11:30am-1:30pm
• Meal Packaging (MPLS) – 11:30am-1:30pm
• Client Meal Delivery (St. Paul) – 11:30am-1:30pm
Saturday, March 25
• Meal Packaging (St. Paul) – 9-11am
• Ice Packing for Shipping (St. Paul) 10am-Noon
Our next topic to help you #FuelForTheFuture is to eat a variety of foods from all the food groups. Eating a variety of fruits, vegetables, proteins, grains, and fats can help us fuel our bodies with the nutrients we need! When it comes to fruits and vegetables, have you ever heard the phrase “eat the rainbow”? This phrase encourages you to eat different colors of fruits and vegetables as they’ll give our bodies different nutrients. Fun fact: orange foods like carrots, sweet potatoes, and apricots are rich in Vitamin A, which helps with our vision and immune system! #NationalNutritionMonth
March is Multiple Sclerosis (MS) Awareness Month. MS is a disease that impacts the brain, spinal cord, and optic nerves, which make up the central nervous system. The resulting damage to myelin disrupts signals to and from the brain and can cause unpredictable symptoms such as numbness, tingling, mood changes, memory problems, pain, fatigue, blindness, and or paralysis. Everyone’s experience with MS is different. 

Open Arms is proud to serve #medicallytailoredmeals to people diagnosed with MS during their time of need. 

As we work towards finding a cure for MS, it's important that we continue to raise awareness. Use the link in our bio and click on "MS Awareness Month" to learn more.
Happy Monday! We hope the sunshine is providing some much needed energy to all of you. Looking for something fun to fill your week with? We have lots of open shifts available in both of our kitchens. Please sign up for a shift on VolunteerHub (link in bio) and don't forget to take a cookie on your way out! 

Here is a list of our biggest needs for this week:

Tue, 3/14:
•	STP Kitchen
o	9-11am
o	11:30am-1:30pm
o	5-7pm

Wed, 3/15:
•	STP Kitchen
o	9-11am (High Need)
o	11:30am-1:30pm (High Need)

•	MPLS Bakery
o	7:30-9am (High Need)
o	Meal packaging for Delivery 9-11am

Thurs, 3/16:
•	STP Kitchen
o	7:30-9am (High Need)
o	11:30am-1:30pm (High Need)
o	5-7pm

Fri, 3/17 🍀:
•	STP Kitchen
o	7:30-9am (High Need)
o	11:30am-1:30pm (High Need)
•	MPLS Kitchen
o	2:30-4:30pm

Sat, 3/18
•	STP Kitchen
o	9-11am (High Need)
o	11:30am-1:30pm (High Need)
•	STP Ice Packing Prep 
o	10am-12pm (High Need)
Happy second week of #NationalNutritionMonth! Planning your meals and snacks goes along with our theme of #FuelForTheFuture. Making a weekly food plan can help keep you organized and help you save money. Here are a few tips for making a successful plan! 
1. Set aside a couple hours one day per week to make your plan and grocery shop 
2. Choose the snacks and recipes you want to have that week 
3. Check your fridge and pantry to see what ingredients you already have 
4. Make a grocery list and do your best to stick to the list while shopping 
5. Some people find it helpful to make several recipes at once and portion them into containers that they can use for the next several days for meals.
We're back with more health-ful tips from our nutrition team! A great way to eat with the environment in mind is to grow your own food at home. It's a fun and cost-saving way to add more plant-based foods to your diet. Check out this reel to learn more about it! #FuelForTheFuture #nationalnutritionmonth 

Text caption: Start by choosing a location that gets at least 6 hours of sunlight. Be creative with the size and type of containers you use (5-gallon buckets, terra cotta or plastic pots, hanging baskets, wooden barrels, etc.), making sure to use containers that have holes for drainage. It’s important to water your plants often as some small containers can dry out quickly on hot days. Choose a good potting soil and fertilize when needed. Plants that grow well in containers or backyard gardens include radishes, tomatoes, eggplant, sweet and hot peppers, potatoes, peas, beans, squash, zucchini, herbs and greens.
Today is #WorldKidneyDay, a global campaign aimed at raising awareness of the importance of our kidneys. People with kidney disease are among the most vulnerable in the population due to their ongoing need for consistently coordinated care which is often lifelong and involves complex ongoing treatment. Open Arms is proud to serve a kidney-friendly/renal menu to our clients living with kidney disease. Our renal menu includes meals that are high in protein with low to moderate amounts of potassium, phosphorus, and sodium. Learn more about World Kidney Day using the link in our bio.
Today, we celebrate #NationalRegisteredDietitianDay by introducing our amazing Nutrition Team. They provide nutrition counseling to Open Arms clients at no cost! Our dietitians also collaborate with our chefs to ensure our menus meet client’s needs specific to their illnesses. Open Arms is proud to offer nutrition services in addition to the medically tailored meals we serve our clients each week. Stay tuned for more from the Nutrition Team as part of #NationalNutritionMonth.
Tomorrow is Hunger Day on the Hill! Several Open Arms staff and volunteers will be gathering with @HungerSolutionsMN and our neighbors at the MN state capitol to take part in the legislative process. We'll be advocating for food security for Minnesota families, investment in hunger-free schools, and support for local food sourcing. #HungerDay2023 serves as a great opportunity to fight for struggling Minnesotans and encourage our #mnleg lawmakers to pass meaningful legislation that addresses food insecurity in our community!
"I am so grateful for your services. I'd never even heard of Open Arms before my doctor referred me. To tell you the truth, I don't think I'd still be in my own home without your services. I wouldn't be able to handle it." - A Client of Open Arms
Our first #NationalNutritionMonth topic is eating with the environment in mind! Eating plant-based meals is one way to do this. Plant-based meals are more Earth-friendly as they require less resources and energy to produce than food made from animals. We invite you to check out this delicious plant-based recipe for overnight oats!

#FuelForTheFuture
Looking for a fun way to spend an afternoon with your colleagues? Group volunteer opportunities are now available in both of our kitchens! Shifts are scheduled from 2:30-4:30pm and we can accommodate up to 15 people. We’ll also provide your group with an orientation beforehand to get everybody up to speed! Come with colleagues, your book group, your church, or friends. Providing medically tailored meals to our neighbors with life threatening illnesses takes a village, bring yours! Learn more and sign up for a group shift using the link in our bio.
March is here, which means we are celebrating #NationalNutritionMonth at Open Arms! This year’s theme is “Fuel for the future.” This month, our registered dietitians will be sharing nutrition tips and recipes to help us make healthy food choices and develop healthy eating habits to nourish ourselves and the environment!
 
Learn more about National Nutrition Month using the link in our bio!
 
#FoodIsMedicine #FuelForTheFuture

Join us for our Open House Celebration! 

YOU are invited to an Open House Celebration for the entire community at our new Open Arms St. Paul Kitchen & Campus! Please join us on Saturday, Feb. 4 from 2-5 p.m. Stop in with family and friends and explore the facility, play games, win prizes, and enter a drawing for fun giveaways.